The MARC commuter trains between Baltimore and DC are sporting these terrornoia posters styled after the heyday of Stalin’s totalitarian regime, when Soviet citizens were exhorted to spy on their neighbors and fink them out for suspicious behavior. And they say irony is dead. From here.

Gary Wolf writes a thought-provoking and short (both good) article for Wired opining that the future of American security lies in ignoring the Department of Homeland Security, with its “rainbow of doom,” its magic airport involuntary nudity machines, and its suspension of the Constitution and relying instead on common sense and democratic fundamentals. Regarding 9/11:

After both buildings were burning, many calls to 911 resulted in advice to stay put and wait for rescue. Also, occupants of the towers had been trained to use the stairs, not the elevators, in case of evacuation.

Fortunately, this advice was mostly ignored. According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day.

In fact, the people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene. While walking down the stairs, they answered their cell phones and glanced at their BlackBerries, learning from friends that there had been a terrorist attack and that the Pentagon had also been hit. News of what was happening passed by word of mouth, and fellow workers pressed hesitating colleagues to continue their exit.

Florida judges are tossing out DUI cases when defendants ask to see the source code for the breathalyzers that busted them. The manufacturers won’t turn over the source, and since the machine’s correct operation is critical to establishing the case against the DUIers, the case is dismissed when it can’t be produced. From the article:

All four of Seminole County’s criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works – its software source code, for instance – and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected.

A senator from Kansas is seeking the Republican nomination for Secretary of State. That senator thinks that giving women the right to vote was a mistake. The irony… that senator it’s a woman. From the AP article:

“I think the 19th Amendment, while it’s not an evil in and of itself, is a symptom of something I don’t approve of,” she said at the time. “The 19th Amendment is around because men weren’t doing their jobs, and I think that’s sad. I believe the man should be the head of the family. The woman should be the heart of the family.”

Must be Strom Thurmond speaking through her.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from driving. The AP has an article about the Saudi response to the possibility of lifting the ban:

Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics.

To be fair, that is how most 80’s porn flicks start.

City officials in Salem, Massachusetts want to erect a bronze statue of Samantha from the TV show Bewitched. The idea (and money) comes from TV Land, the network behind the statue of Honeymooner Ralph Kramden at NYC’s Port Authority and Sheriff Andy Taylor and son Opie in Raleigh, North Carolina. Witches in Salem are not pleased. From the Los Angeles Times article:

“It is kind of disrespectful, because we are striving to get away from that TV image,” said Melissa Coombs, 23, who said she has been a witch since she was 14.
Coombs, who works in a witch store, said: “This is a religion, not something to make fun of. As it is, people come into the store and think we can make stuff move for them…”
“Our network is all about celebrating classic television. We put them on the air, and in these cases, we literally put them on pedestals,” said Robert Pellizzi, TV Land senior vice president, in New York. “It’s a fun way to get people to smile and think about their favorite TV shows.”
Pellizzi said a trip to Salem last Halloween convinced TV Land executives that the “Bewitched” statue belonged there. He said the statue was aimed at “fun, pop culture” and was not a statement about history.
“This is not about 1692,” he said, referring to the year when 19 citizens accused of witchcraft were hanged in Salem.

When asked at yesterday’s press conference about Amnesty International’s report criticizing America’s treatment of detainees, President Bush called the claims “absurd.” According to the White House transcript, he also said:

In terms of the detainees, we’ve had thousands of people detained. We’ve investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations — by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth.

What, Dubya? You’re trying to trying to dispel the widely held opinion that you’re a rube? And you think that you can achieve that by appearing professorial as you use a word in a speech that you assume people don’t know, then define it for them? Well, OK, that tactic may seem condescending and blatantly transparent, but you’re the prez. There are just one or two things you may want to consider:

• Make sure you use the right word-definition combination. For instance, disassemble does not mean to “not tell the truth”, but dissemble does.
• To lessen the transparency of the definition tactic, it might be a good idea to not use “Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day” from the previous fucking day.

How did you get into Yale? Oh, never mind, I remember.

Recently there was a bill in the Texas House that aimed to ban municipal wireless networks. It was a high-profile bill because it so clearly illustrated government bowing to the financial interests of large corporations. This weekend, that bill died. Good guys win.